Very few run with it. Random heal that doesn't proc from PW:S, SS, or DA, which tend to be our biggest "heals." Not to mention that the proc can be completely wasted. In my opinion, TF gear is better, but if you can't get access to TF, then getting the 4 piece won't hurt you.

I wouldn't say "few" people run with it. I haven't seen any high end (Ra-den access) priests that don't. Probably because on many fights the proc can be as high as 5% of your healing done, which is really not too shabby for a bonus. It may not be the most reliable bonus, but it's free healing.

As for taking off-pieces--healing isn't like DPS where you must stack the one stat that is the best for you... dropping a little crit to take the tier gloves, for example (or dropping Spirit to wear the Chest, whatever you decide) isn't going to impact your healing much, if at all. Haste isn't bad, just not preferred. Go for the bonus. There's really no compelling reason not to.

I suppose I should have specified what raid size. In a 25 man raid very few Disc Priests take the 4 piece. 25 is a bit more rigid in the way you gear up because of the specilized role you play in the raid, as opposed to 10 man where you need to do a bit of everything.

I suppose I should have specified what raid size. In a 25 man raid very few Disc Priests take the 4 piece. 25 is a bit more rigid in the way you gear up because of the specilized role you play in the raid, as opposed to 10 man where you need to do a bit of everything.

I suppose I should have specified what raid size. In a 25 man raid very few Disc Priests take the 4 piece. 25 is a bit more rigid in the way you gear up because of the specilized role you play in the raid, as opposed to 10 man where you need to do a bit of everything.

Not true. The heal is quite strong, and as stated, can be up to 5% of your healing. It can proc Aegis, and any self-respecting disc priest uses penance on cooldown (AKA roughly 6 times a minute).

Add to this the fact that only Ra Den has chests with 3 sockets, and no shoulders with 2 sockets exists apart from tier.
Take a look at shoulders - your options are between:
Lost Shoulders of Fluidity (a random drop, that would also have to be thunderforged), clocking in at:
1302 int
blue socket
60 int bonus
881 crit and 881 haste
OR
Gleaming Eye shoulderpads, with:
1302 int
red socket
60 spirit bonus
858 spirit
895 crit.

Now, assuming a blue 160 crit 160 spi gem in fluidity, and a yellow 320 crit in the gleamings (not gemming for 60 spirit bonus), and a 160 crit 80 int plus 320 crit gem in the tier shoulders, we have for tier:

See how small the difference is, even if they're thunderforged? This means that you would be relying on Chest, Helm and Legs to be strong enough to outweight the tier bonuses - gloves are used as an offpiece already, so 4 pc or not, the bonus from them wouldn't matter.
And they aren't.

I wouldn't say "few" people run with it. I haven't seen any high end (Ra-den access) priests that don't. Probably because on many fights the proc can be as high as 5% of your healing done, which is really not too shabby for a bonus. It may not be the most reliable bonus, but it's free healing.

As for taking off-pieces--healing isn't like DPS where you must stack the one stat that is the best for you... dropping a little crit to take the tier gloves, for example (or dropping Spirit to wear the Chest, whatever you decide) isn't going to impact your healing much, if at all. Haste isn't bad, just not preferred. Go for the bonus. There's really no compelling reason not to.

I have 2 Ra-den kills and I'm not using the 4pc. I wouldn't mind using it, but the tokens literally never drop. 15 H Ji-Kun kills and counting and not a single conqueror token. I've pretty much given up on the idea of having my 4pc while this tier is current.

I have full HC 4 pc and used it to clear the raid on HC. But, I'm starting to think that perhaps the set bonus is overrated in comparison to the extra stats from TF gear. Also, if you look at most of the top disc priests (in both guilds and ranks) you will see that opinion is divided. I'm seeing lots using gear with no spirit on whatsoever and using 2pc and lots using 4pc and going for a more crit heavy rather than int heavy build (i.e. taking 320 crit gems instead of 160 int). This is an area that warrants more investigation IMO. Especially in reference to progress during SoO. Will we be returning to higher spirit yielding stat weightings (i.e. replacing our 160 int/320 crit with 80 spit/160 crit) or are we going to stick with the ~10k spirit setup? I guess it all depends on the upcoming priest changes, which have been kept pretty quiet. But, I imagine they are coming..

I have full HC 4 pc and used it to clear the raid on HC. But, I'm starting to think that perhaps the set bonus is overrated in comparison to the extra stats from TF gear. Also, if you look at most of the top disc priests (in both guilds and ranks) you will see that opinion is divided. I'm seeing lots using gear with no spirit on whatsoever and using 2pc and lots using 4pc and going for a more crit heavy rather than int heavy build (i.e. taking 320 crit gems instead of 160 int). This is an area that warrants more investigation IMO. Especially in reference to progress during SoO. Will we be returning to higher spirit yielding stat weightings (i.e. replacing our 160 int/320 crit with 80 spit/160 crit) or are we going to stick with the ~10k spirit setup? I guess it all depends on the upcoming priest changes, which have been kept pretty quiet. But, I imagine they are coming..

I'm pretty sure if they were going to address healers playing with low spirit they'd look at Mistweavers first, not Disc Priests. It's not like we actively avoid Spirit at all costs, we just don't need very much of it with the LMG and Rapture.

Not true. The heal is quite strong, and as stated, can be up to 5% of your healing...It can proc Aegis, and any self-respecting disc priest uses penance on cooldown (AKA roughly 6 times a minute).

I'd rather have a static 3% which I know I will get every fight, as opposed to random chance ranging from 1% to 5%. The average I bet will be around 3% as well. 5% is on the extreme side, as is 1%. Certain fights it will be more viable than others, no doubt about that.

Plenty of moments when it doesn't make sense to use Penance on CD. I just downed heroic Twins last night, so I'll go with that example. Spamming PoH during day phase. Getting shields out for Crashing Star. SS set-up. Penace is not a weak spell by any means, don't get me wrong, and it has its uses in that fight as well. It's just not always used on CD like you claim.

I'll admit I was wrong in saying that most Priests don't use it in a 25 man raid setting, but all of you claiming that 4 piece is undeniably superior are wrong as well. It seems like plenty of Priests who are better than anyone of us in this thread agree.

- - - Updated - - -

As for the tier shoulder vs non-tier, you picked the one that best fit your argument. I can do that as well.

Off tier legs beat tier as well. Chest loses simply because of the extra socket, if you don't have access to Ra-den. The gloves I have access to are the ones from Primordius, but those look like a clear win because of the extra socket and bigger bonus. I didn't feel like going through all of these like the head, but feel free if you do not believe me. So my choice for 2 piece would be tier shoulder and chest. I actually didn't bother doing the math before and was just going to stick with tier gloves and legs, so thanks.

So with the right drops, you get much more stats than what you claimed. Also, the bonus for the tier shoulders is 120 spirit, not 120 int, unless WoWHead is wrong. Makes tier a bit less attractive for me.http://www.wowhead.com/items=4.1?filter=sl=3

If I made any mistakes feel free to correct me.

Side note: Lei Shen already drops a random heal trinket that is BiS. Why would you want two of those heals?

I'd rather have a static 3% which I know I will get every fight, as opposed to random chance ranging from 1% to 5%. The average I bet will be around 3% as well. 5% is on the extreme side, as is 1%. Certain fights it will be more viable than others, no doubt about that.

Plenty of moments when it doesn't make sense to use Penance on CD. I just downed heroic Twins last night, so I'll go with that example. Spamming PoH during day phase. Getting shields out for Crashing Star. SS set-up. Penace is not a weak spell by any means, don't get me wrong, and it has its uses in that fight as well. It's just not always used on CD like you claim.

If you're on AOE-healing duty for twins as disc, your guild is doing it wrong. Literally any other healer has far better tools to handle the ticking AOE-damage from day phase than prayer of healing - disc, on the other hand, is the perfect choise to deal with short random bursts of damage, so that no one dies, through atonement (AKA penance). Meteor spawns and the sunbeam nuke are both random, and deals a heavy hit you have to heal back up. As disc always picks the lowest target, you're much better off doing that.

As for the tier shoulder vs non-tier, you picked the one that best fit your argument. I can do that as well.

Off tier legs beat tier as well. Chest loses simply because of the extra socket, if you don't have access to Ra-den. The gloves I have access to are the ones from Primordius, but those look like a clear win because of the extra socket and bigger bonus. I didn't feel like going through all of these like the head, but feel free if you do not believe me. So my choice for 2 piece would be tier shoulder and chest. I actually didn't bother doing the math before and was just going to stick with tier gloves and legs, so thanks.

So with the right drops, you get much more stats than what you claimed. Also, the bonus for the tier shoulders is 120 spirit, not 120 int, unless WoWHead is wrong. Makes tier a bit less attractive for me.http://www.wowhead.com/items=4.1?filter=sl=3

If I made any mistakes feel free to correct me.

Side note: Lei Shen already drops a random heal trinket that is BiS. Why would you want two of those heals?

Of course I picked the one that best suited my argument. The point was to show that you are relying on *3* pieces of gear (helm, chest, legs) to be stronger than tier+bonuses, not 4, as gloves would be used as the offpiece in either scenario.
And if the assumption that tier chest is roughly equal to the heroic thunderforged chests is correct, then we're down to the hood+legs - two pieces need to outweight something that would average 3% healing. It's just not going to happen.

Simply put, you're overvalueing the stats on heroic thunderforged items, and you're undervalueing the strength of a 120K smart heal, especially on progress. Disc isn't capped through mana at this point, disc is capped through the speed we can cast heals when shit hits the fan. Getting a free heal during such a moment is invalueable.

Lastly - there's probably a reason why the Lei Shen random-heal trinket is BiS. Why would having one random heal mean you wouldn't want a second? It's a smart heal - the overheal it does is almost non-existing either way. More passive smart heals = better.

If you're on AOE-healing duty for twins as disc, your guild is doing it wrong. Literally any other healer has far better tools to handle the ticking AOE-damage from day phase than prayer of healing - disc, on the other hand, is the perfect choise to deal with short random bursts of damage, so that no one dies, through atonement (AKA penance). Meteor spawns and the sunbeam nuke are both random, and deals a heavy hit you have to heal back up. As disc always picks the lowest target, you're much better off doing that.

The DA number difference is staggeringly in favor of Felice. Atonement usage is similar between us, which points to heavy PoH spam. I think I place an over-reliance on PW:S as more and more Disc Priests seem to be going back to spamming PoH for DA procs. I'm curious why they weren't trying to pre-shield Crashing Star in the first night phase though, which is where a good number of my PW:S come in. I only have the information I can get from logs, so there may be a reason that I'm not seeing, but it seems like they are doing the exact opposite of what you are advocating.

Pretty sure we're doing something right seeing as we downed it. No one died during sun phase either. Had a couple die during dusk due to Crashing Star spreading issues. I understand where you are comng from in trying to keep the lowest health people alive, but you are simply missing out to too much hps in an hps heavy phase to do that, which can easily lead to more deaths. Your raid hps is also much higher than ours is, so me putting out less hps is even less of an option for my guild.

Simply put, you're overvalueing the stats on heroic thunderforged items, and you're undervalueing the strength of a 120K smart heal, especially on progress

Too often I find that procs happen when you don't actually need them. Why do you think most people prefer on use trinkets? Can you prove to me that all those procs come when they are most needed? Or do they come during low damage phases when you are more likely to be going through an Atonement rotation, which includes Penance. I used Penance a good amount on Twins, but it was mostly for movement to get into position and right after a Crashing Star during night phase. I'll concede that 4 piece may net you more healing on some fights, maybe even most, but like I said, it could be healing that wasn't even needed. Also noticed that Felice didn't use the 4 piece on that fight. Just saying.

The DA number difference is staggeringly in favor of Felice. Atonement usage is similar between us, which points to heavy PoH spam. I think I place an over-reliance on PW:S as more and more Disc Priests seem to be going back to spamming PoH for DA procs. I'm curious why they weren't trying to pre-shield Crashing Star in the first night phase though, which is where a good number of my PW:S come in. I only have the information I can get from logs, so there may be a reason that I'm not seeing, but it seems like they are doing the exact opposite of what you are advocating.

Pretty sure we're doing something right seeing as we downed it. No one died during sun phase either. Had a couple die during dusk due to Crashing Star spreading issues. I understand where you are comng from in trying to keep the lowest health people alive, but you are simply missing out to too much hps in an hps heavy phase to do that, which can easily lead to more deaths. Your raid hps is also much higher than ours is, so me putting out less hps is even less of an option for my guild.

Felice is not me, no . He's the one we recruited to replace my alt so I could get back on my main. The only issues I have with him is the fact that his damage as disc is laughably low compared to what I usually did (about double). http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...=11047&e=11512 here's a log to one of our Qon kills where you can see that we have almost the exact same HPS, but I beat him on DPS with more than double the output - gear was, of course, roughly equal. http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-vl...=11971&e=12404 this is the only log of twins I could find my priest in, Felice is also in there. Difference of Felice doing 9K HPS more than me, but I'm doing double his healing output. As you can see in healing breakdown, I didn't even bother using spirit shell, while he has 9M of his healing done from it - meaning you can easily see that his playstyle is the "bomb raid with healing", while mine is "atonement to snipe up low targets so they don't die".
Considering the relative small difference in output, and the much bigger difference in damage, I'd still say that I did alot better there than he did - simply because on progress, bombing the raid with healing is not the best way to go.

You're also mistaking a farm fight for a progress fight. Of course he's going to be whoring HPS by PoH spamming when there's absolutely no danger of anyone actually dying, and enrage is a non-issue. We're more than 20 itemlevels higher now on average than we were when we progressed the fight - this week we had lulin at 5% before the second phase even started. On progress, we were hard pressed to get her below 40%.
Simply put, farm logs aren't going to give you any indication of what's "best" in terms of playstyle. It might show you the highest possible HPS, but Disc was never about pumping out HPS. Disc was always about preventing death through sniping the low targets with smartheals and shields, and providing a DPS-boost that could help you meet enrages (our first Animus heroic kill was done during his "FULL POWER!" cast - on that kill, I had done more than 20M dmg to the actual boss. If we had taken any other healer instead of a disc, we wouldn't have killed it, because we'd be lacking the 20M damage).

But let's put any misunderstandings to rest:
Of course PoH spam is going to be the highest possible sustainable HPS (PW:S spam, assuming all shields gets broken, are even higher HPS wise, but not sustainable). PoH spam during progress, though, is a big waste of what Disc is "good" at. If you want to try and bomb the raid with heals to keep them alive, then go holy or get a mistweaver in instead. Thats not what disc is "good" at, and playing disc as you would holy - bombing the raid with healing instead of preventing damage and providing dps - is just counter productive to progress.

I also don't see what relevance it has that you managed to kill the boss. Gratz to you, I guess? Of course people can use sub optimal playstyles for the fight when you're overgearing it as heavily as you are. You're still going to have roughly the same performance as someone who did it with 10 item levels less, no matter how you choose to play.
Your raid HPS being lower has nothing to do with anything either - it doesn't magically make your playstyle the better option for progress. Your monk and aurorus are SEVERELY underperforming compared to what they should be doing on this fight. Telling them to get their fingers out of their asses are a better option than sacrifising raid stability.

Too often I find that procs happen when you don't actually need them. Why do you think most people prefer on use trinkets? Can you prove to me that all those procs come when they are most needed? Or do they come during low damage phases when you are more likely to be going through an Atonement rotation, which includes Penance. I used Penance a good amount on Twins, but it was mostly for movement to get into position and right after a Crashing Star during night phase. I'll concede that 4 piece may net you more healing on some fights, maybe even most, but like I said, it could be healing that wasn't even needed. Also noticed that Felice didn't use the 4 piece on that fight. Just saying.

How do you know most people prefer on-use trinkets? I loathe them as a healer, at the very least - even as a DPS they're extremely annoying as you might hold on them for too long incase you get a good line-up, and waste their potential.

I can't prove that the procs come when they are most needed, because obviously they come whenever they please. This doesn't make them any worse, though, as again - it's smarthealing. If one person has lost HP, it'll heal that one person. If it crits, it gives divine aegis. There's no downside to it.

Now, let me turn it around - can you prove that the extra int and secondary stat budget you get is better than the smartheal? 500 int makes your PoH hit for about 1K more, or 5K total for a full 5/5 PoH. The healing it does is prone to overhealing, though, as it's not "smart". Remember, the stonegaze hood which is the "biggest" benefit due to the int-socket is still "only" 281 int while sacrifising secondaries compared to the tier helmet. The legs from Ra Den is about 160 int ahead. The chest from Ra Den is about 260 int ahead. That's a total of 700 int.
As for secondaries, the chest is 235 behind, and the legs are 331 ahead (note that I count spirit as a secondary too for simplicity).
So adding that to the helms stats of 52 behind on secondaries, using ra den TF chest, ra den TF legs, stonegaze hood, the random-drop shoulders, you get:

+715 int.
+73 secondary stats.

I just can't imagine it being "worth it".

Not sure why Felice isn't using 4 set. It's possible he's yet to get the conq chest token (hadn't really had any of them drop).

But they're just as likely to happen when you do need them. The thing is, unless I am mistaken (quite possible), the 4pc appears to be RPPM, not on an ICD. Most Disc Priests are pretty low Haste at the moment, barring a few outliers. The other two Priests in my raid are both primarily Disc, and both low Haste. I am primarily Holy and somewhat high Haste (5k at the moment). The one that has the four piece has 3269 Haste. My 4pc routinely does more healing than that Priest's 4pc - not just percentage wise, but raw healing. Our last consorts kill, mine did ~200k more healing (so, two extra procs?) over an 8 minute fight. On Tortos, mine did ~850k more healing than his over ~7 minute fight (which, of course, since most of the healing isn't considered "overhealing" it's just showing more because there's less "sniping").

Why do you think most people prefer on use trinkets?

I actually don't know of many...actually, any...healers who prefer on-use trinkets. Most who have them end up macro'ing them to healing spells because they don't feel like having to find a keybind for yet another CD. Just my personal experience. I also happen to be one who hates on-use trinkets, unless I'm tanking.

Can you prove to me that all those procs come when they are most needed? Or do they come during low damage phases when you are more likely to be going through an Atonement rotation, which includes Penance. I used Penance a good amount on Twins, but it was mostly for movement to get into position and right after a Crashing Star during night phase. I'll concede that 4 piece may net you more healing on some fights, maybe even most, but like I said, it could be healing that wasn't even needed. Also noticed that Felice didn't use the 4 piece on that fight. Just saying.

I think you're missing the point. It's healing that you wouldn't otherwise have. It's bonus healing. It may come with you don't need it. But it should be consistent enough that enough of the healing procs hit when they are needed.

I think you misunderstood me about my Disc playstyle. Usually my number one priority is preventing damage. My top 3 "heals" are usually PW:S, SS, and DA. Most fights it is pointless to cast PoH without SS simply because the cast is too slow to be effective. I wasn't advocating just spamming PoH on every fight. There are certain situations where it is useful, but that can easily depend on your other healers.

That 700 intellect also affects all your other spells, including the absorbs, which are arguably more important than a heal proc. You favor smart healing while I prefer setting up shields with some Atonement inbetween.

Anyway, we are starting to talk in circles, and we clearly have differing playstyles, so lets just leave it at that. Thanks for the discussion.

I think you misunderstood me about my Disc playstyle. Usually my number one priority is preventing damage. My top 3 "heals" are usually PW:S, SS, and DA. Most fights it is pointless to cast PoH without SS simply because the cast is too slow to be effective. I wasn't advocating just spamming PoH on every fight. There are certain situations where it is useful, but that can easily depend on your other healers.

That 700 intellect also affects all your other spells, including the absorbs, which are arguably more important than a heal proc. You favor smart healing while I prefer setting up shields with some Atonement inbetween.

Anyway, we are starting to talk in circles, and we clearly have differing playstyles, so lets just leave it at that. Thanks for the discussion.

Point about the 700 intellect is that even if it affects all the other heals, I don't think it's going to provide you with a 3% throughput bonus. Would love if someone could check it with a calculator or something if one is aviable :/. Can't really figure healadinne out.

Thing about Absorbs vs Smart healing is that if you know a big hit is comming, yes, you can prevent it. But there's no other healer but disc that provides "snap healing" at the same rate as atonement. For example, you preshield the meteor bolts on Twins, HOWEVER, you can't be sure which targets will be hit by the meteors. This means that you either shield far more targets than required and "waste" dps time that could be usefull on progress, or you shield too few targets and miss out on some of the hits (in which case an instant heal from the set bonus +3x penance bolts would make up for that :P).

I agree that shielding while moving is great, but if I'm standing still and the target isn't going to actually die the next hit, I'd rather smart heal with atonement than use a shield. An example could be Animus heroic - I almost exclusively spammed Solace, Penance, and shields in the last part of the fight on progress. Solace+penance because it was smart healing, bombing up the lowest targets (and thus most likely to die from jolt), shields when they were both on cooldown because it could also prevent deaths. You don't have to go "either or" - utilising both to the full potential is entirely possible.